Why remake crap?
I will admit I never gave the TV show a chance because the movie was so bad.
The series was great. Goofy at times, but there were some fantastic episodes. It was like Star Trek, it did episodes that explored social problems in a fantasy setting. Episodes dealt with racism, the role of the sexes (three alien sexes are required to procreate, leading to some awkward moments in human culture), what it means to be a man (men carry babies, causing crises for alien males trying to assimilate into human society by asserting their "manliness") Nazi-hunting (an old alien targets and murders the alien "overseers" who enslaved them), love, sex, voting rights, aging, and a myriad other issues.
FWIW, Ken Johnson, who developed the TV series, also hated the movie. Before the new series premieres, I suggest checking out the original series on DVD. Ken Johnson does a really good commentary for the pilot where he talks about why the movie didn't work for him at all and what changes they decided they had to make for the series.
My fear is that the new series will be a lot of cop action with cool FX at the expense of character development. That was Johnson's main criticism of the first movie. In fact, I think Johnson once said the only scene in the movie he really liked was when George says goodbye to his family and Johnson said something like, "Wait a minute, who are they? Tell me about them!" Then the scene is over in seconds.
I know nothing about Tim Minear. Hope the guy "gets" Alien Nation.
FWIW, here's some footage of a cast get-together at Ken Johnson's house where everyone reminisced about the series. This is from the Alien Nation movie collection DVD set.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wEn7OlCYsc&feature=channel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-eCNryMrnA&feature=channel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CyLlZ96bFE&feature=channel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3yaliaOU6E&feature=channel
It's not going to be easy to capture this kind of chemistry without this cast.